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Vladimir Nabokov

" Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader. And I shall tell you why. When we read a book for the first time the very process of laboriously moving our eyes from left to right, line after line, page after page, this complicated physical work upon the book, the very process of learning in terms of space and time what the book is about, this stands between us and artistic appreciation. When we look at a painting we do not have to move our eyes in a special way even if, as in a book, the picture contains elements of depth and development. The element of time does not really enter in a first contact with a painting. In reading a book, we must have time to acquaint ourselves with it. We have no physical organ (as we have the eye in regard to a painting) that takes in the whole picture and then can enjoy its details. But at a second, or third, or fourth reading we do, in a sense, behave towards a book as we do towards a painting. However, let us not confuse the physical eye, that monstrous masterpiece of evolution, with the mind, an even more monstrous achievement. A book, no matter what it is‚Äîa work of fiction or a work of science (the boundary line between the two is not as clear as is generally believed)‚Äîa book of fiction appeals first of all to the mind. The mind, the brain, the top of the tingling spine, is, or should be, the only instrument used upon a book. "

Vladimir Nabokov

Art , Appreciation

related quotes

" It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight. "

Vladimir Nabokov

Love

" I think it is all a matter of love the more you love a memory the stronger and stranger it becomes "

Vladimir Nabokov

Love

" I recall certain moments, let us call them icebergs in paradise, when after having had my fill of her ‚Äìafter fabulous, insane exertions that left me limp and azure-barred‚ÄìI would gather her in my arms with, at last, a mute moan of human tenderness (her skin glistening in the neon light coming from the paved court through the slits in the blind, her soot-black lashes matted, her grave gray eyes more vacant than ever‚Äìfor all the world a little patient still in the confusion of a drug after a major operation)‚Äìand the tenderness would deepen to shame and despair, and I would lull and rock my lone light Lolita in my marble arms, and moan in her warm hair, and caress her at random and mutely ask her blessing, and at the peak of this human agonized selfless tenderness (with my soul actually hanging around her naked body and ready to repent), all at once, ironically, horribly, lust would swell again‚Äìand 'oh, no,' Lolita would say with a sigh to heaven, and the next moment the tenderness and the azure‚Äìall would be shattered. "

Vladimir Nabokov

Beautiful

" Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it. "

Vladimir Nabokov

Love , Memory

" Human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece "

Vladimir Nabokov

Life

" Don't cry, I'm sorry to have deceived you so much, but that's how life is. "

Vladimir Nabokov

Life , Lies

" Let all of life be an unfettered howl. "

Vladimir Nabokov

Living , Life

" Nostalgia in reverse, the longing for yet another strange land, grew especially strong in spring. "

Vladimir Nabokov

Desire , craving

" The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. "

Vladimir Nabokov

Reality , Life

" We all have such fateful objects -- it may be a recurrent landscape in one case, a number in another -- carefully chosen by the gods to attract events of specific significance for us: here shall John always stumble; there shall Jane's heart always break. "

Vladimir Nabokov

Fate , Life

" The square root of I is I. "

Vladimir Nabokov

Philosophy , Ego

" All religions are based on obsolete terminology. "

Vladimir Nabokov

Philosophy , Faith

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